Three smarter strategies to improve your advice delivery

Have you ever given client advice and realised that it just wasn’t connecting? It can be very frustrating – you’re trying to help but for some reason your advice isn’t landing the way you need it to.

So how can you improve the delivery of your advice for better business and client outcomes?

According to the NetWealth AdviceTech Research report, thirty-seven per cent of advisers believe technology can improve customer perceptions of advice. Implementing a variety of digital strategies can help you leverage the value of your advice to deliver it more efficiently, and can help ensure that client and customer perception of the advice you deliver is positive and optimised to benefit both the receiver, and your business overall.

A confident and assured delivery is an important factor in how your advice is perceived. No matter how top-notch your insights are, if you’re not communicating them in a way that is cohesive, organised and efficient, your clients will struggle to feel assured.

When it comes to professional services, we’ve found that there are three main qualities that help advisers to convey competence and capability: timeliness, availability and effectiveness.

Here are three smarter strategies we recommend that can help you harness these qualities to improve the delivery of your advice.

1. Time flies (when you have no document lag)

Many advisers and professionals struggle under heavy compliance requirements, and we often hear about the frustration posed by documentation lag and delivery of signed documents.

This not only holds up your business, but can present compliance and security issues. By switching to a digitally-based process, you can streamline document administration in your business, and provide a better service to your clients.

By implementing digital document solutions, such as SuiteBox, you can deliver documents to clients instantly, review them online and get signatures on the spot. Some SuiteBox customers report that this has decreased their document delivery time by up to 2 weeks! This also improves your ability to action client needs and requests quicker, improving their perception of your services.

Digital document management also provides reassurance to clients around document security, by removing the chance that anything could get lost in the mail. It also offers clients the benefit of knowing all their information can be encrypted and stored securely during consultations, offering further protection of their valuable personal information.

2. What if you could do more, in less time?

Face time with clients, both existing and prospective, is crucial for relationship building and business development, but it can also be incredibly time consuming.

What if you could get back some of that time to reinvest in building and managing your business?

Video meetings can help you maximise your meeting availability, by eliminating travel time and the need to manage appointments by location to ensure efficiency. It also helps to cut costs by drastically reducing – if not eliminating - travel-associated expenses, while retaining valuable face-to-face interaction.

This can be especially beneficial for business development. Have you ever had a prospective client become frustrated because they couldn’t get an appointment as quickly as they would like? Video meetings allow you to schedule more meetings in your day, giving you scope to deliver a greater level of service and improved client satisfaction.

3. The importance of being effective

Being effective simply means your services are efficient, seamless and streamlined – you get things done for your clients quickly with minimal fuss or burden for them.

Clients want to feel like their needs are being looked after, and their affairs handled with consideration to providing the best outcomes. They want to feel like their business is a priority, and that you have all your bases covered in terms of compliance and security.

Digital innovation can be a strong indicator of this for many clients. It projects an image that your operations are forward-thinking, helping your advice to be perceived as forward-thinking as well.

By offering your clients digitally-based solutions that make you more accessible, such as video meetings, and that reduce your delivery and action times, such as digital document review, you are demonstrating to your clients that your business is constantly looking for ways to deliver a smarter and more effective solution for them.

The best news? Implementing these solutions can be done quickly and simply via SuiteBox, so you can work smarter, sooner.

How important are these elements in your advice delivery? What other strategies do you employ to stay engaged with clients?